


Promised Land

by Warpony



Series: Feral Echoes [10]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Big Brothers, Found family goodness, Gen, Little Sisters, Remembering Home, The Xhorhaus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warpony/pseuds/Warpony
Summary: Gaining a new home doesn't mean forgetting where you came from...* * * * *Part of a larger WIP involving a D&D Original Character and the Critical Role Mighty Nein.
Series: Feral Echoes [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711534
Kudos: 28





	Promised Land

Essek Thelyss was certainly a strange creature. Even Brunnera couldn't deny the collective curiosity of the Nein over the Shadowhand. And especially the floating mode of transportation. 

Jester had been the first to attempt to resolve the mystery, easily dropping down to all fours and laying her cheek flat to the earth to try and see under the flowing mantle to spot wither or not Essek's feet touched the earth. Predictably the curtain like mantle was nearly to long to see passed. It brushed the earth, down to the fraction of an inch, but that fraction of an inch was just enough to see that Essek was indeed floating, much to the Nein’s absolute glee. 

Brunnera thought Essek seemed a bit off, smelled a little like he was twisted up on the inside somehow. Like there was some very old sickness or a deeply festered infection that was in dire need of healing. It was hard to describe but when he tried to explain it to Caduceus later the grave cleric had only nodded and agreed with him in that dreamy way when he was thinking of something abstractly or knew something that he wasn't going to share just yet. It soothed Brunnera he wasn't the only one that caught hints of it and let the observation drift away from him. 

The house was a surprise. A surprise and left a strange feeling of permanence that Brunnera had never expected or experienced. Not even in his earliest years were colored with the constancy of dwellings. Houses and neighborhoods. His clan had been nomadic, as all their kind had been for centuries, roaming massive territories and making camp when needed before moving on. When the slavers came and tore his family apart it had either been by sheer bad luck or they had been tracked a long while before being cornered. 

The house with its stained glass windows and purple wood in the Firmaments was more than just a place to stay. It was a promise of a kind. To this country and its people. And in another way a debt, to Essek and the den he belonged to. 

The Nein scattered the moment that Essek carefully extracted himself from Jester's hug and had closed the door behind him. They raced around, choosing rooms, making plans, inspecting the existing furniture and diving into the kitchen to see what food had been left. Unfortunately it was empty. 

Brunnera saw it as a small way to escape the strange feeling the house left him and volunteered to slip out and find a market. He tugged his jerkin hood up against the rain and struck out into the city to mull over what they'd been given and what it all meant. He wandered a bit, taking directions here and there before managing to find his way back to the Gallimaufry, to a market. 

A tiny, ancient mother drow helped him fill up a crate with all kinds of fruits and vegetables then steered him to a bakery not far up the lane. It was a short walk to where she’d suggested and Brunnera followed his nose for a good part of it. He bought several loaves of different breads, a few pies and sweet pastries. He took the time pick out a pie to have delivered to Essek's home, wherever that was. The baker assured Brunnera they wouldn't have trouble locating the Shadowhand for the delivery. Putting the skills Jester and Caleb had been teaching him to use he carefully drew out a note to send along with it reading simply _’thank you from the Nein’_. He was rather proud that it had no misspellings and watched as the pie was sent out the door with a runner. 

Bunnera wasn’t far behind, making his way back up from the music laced and green lantern lit streets back into the more pristine and affluent Firmaments.

He ignored the stares from the upper class citizens that seemed to make their home in this part of Rosohna. They didn't approach or stop him but they certainly were whispering behind his back, most in curiosity or confusion. Brunnera didn't think too much on it. He supposed the whole neighborhood was in for quite the bit of excitement as his family settled in and made the house their own as Essek had said. 

He stopped in front of the house, ears perked and catching a bit of the chaos coming from within. They could fill its walls with trinkets and trophies and keepsakes, the way he'd seen others did with their homes. They could paint the walls and carve into the wood and scuff the floor.

Maybe a house wasn't such a bad thing. It was just a bottle. A way to catch up a bit of who they were and plant it in one place. So they could come back, remind themselves who they were when they had weathered the worst and needed rest. It didn’t really matter where they put their bottle, he figured. They could always make another bottle elsewhere if they needed or wanted to. If they ever got to lost or too far away for Messages and Sendings they knew to come back here. To their bottle… home… 

He brought everything inside and managed to find the kitchen again without straying, Caduceus seemed thrilled with his foraging and swiftly set to work putting together a celebratory picnic lunch for the Nein to have on the Tower roof. 

The fighter took one of the boxes of pastries and set out to find Jester, it took far longer and essentially a self-imposed tour of the house before he finally found her and presented her with the treats.

Brunnera often thought that Jester was too physically small to contain the power and intensity of her own emotions. Like the way Nugget’s tail and rump wiggled when he was too excited. The fighter was reminded of his theory again as Jester danced in excited circles in the middle of one of the bedrooms, hugging the box of treats and eating one as she chirped and chattered in rapid fire all about the house and plans and the different rooms. 

“Oh! Brunny! We picked a room for you because yanno you weren’t here!” He grabbed one of his hands and pulled him along to one of the empty rooms. There was a pair of stripped beds and a few empty shelves, bare walls and floors. 

“It’s big.” He rumbled, accepting one of the pastries she offered him, breaking off a bit and eating it, watching bemusedly as Jester bounced around the room excitedly. 

“Well, yanno, you’re a big guy! You need a big space!” She shrugged and hopped up onto the bed, crossing her legs. “You definitely need a bigger bed.”

Brunnera chuffed in agreement, easing down to sit on the floor.

"My room at the Chateau was like this. But I had big windows. And I could look out at the ocean. And the air always smelled like spices and the water." Jester hummed happily. "When there was festivals Mama and I would sit by the window and watch the parades. Sometimes they had fireworks. And we'd name the ships in the harbor."

Her smile was wistful and a bit sad. Brunnera gently patted her leg.

"We'll visit soon..."

The cleric smiled. "It'll be really easy now, with the teleport circle. We can go back and forth all the time."

The fighter nodded then looked around the barren room. It felt too big and to empty. And he hardly had many personal effects to fill it with. He carried most everything he needed on him and he hardly wanted much of anything. 

“What’s the matter Brunny?” Jester asked, cocking her head and her tail thumping gently on the mattress. 

“Feels strange…”

“Never had your own room before?” She swung one leg free over the side of the bed.

“Never had… a house before…” Slowly he stretched his legs out in front of himself, he held out the other half of the pastry to her.

The tiefling cleric drooped, wilting like a flower, and reached out to take the offered sweet. “That’s really sad, Brunny.”

The firbolg fighter shook his head, offering a small smile. “We were wanderers… Didn’t make houses… just roamed… followed herds… growing seasons… up and down the mountains… in the forests…”

“It sounds really peaceful.” 

He nodded though he could feel his words starting to fail him as he tried to polish those faded memories and peer into them a bit better.

“Where was your favorite place?” She gently encouraged, scooting off the bed to sit on the floor next to him, she folded her legs neatly under her skirts. 

Brunnera flicked an ear, lifting his hands to sign; far more fluently than he could speak aloud. After a moment Jester quickly tugged out the journal she’d been filling with Brunnera’s stories and started to write down what he was signing to her. 

The fighter wove a story about a mountain forest tucked deep into the snow packed peaks. As close to what his clan had considered sacred lands. The bone white trees striped in black, golden leaves as if locked in a perpetual autumn season. That it stayed soft and warm well passed the first snows. And in the spring thaw it had flooded into a lush water meadow full of new life. Where all the beasts had been giants but peaceful and docile; white furred stags, ghostly imperial mammoths, saber cats with ivory pelts. Spirits and ancestors and ancient champions drifting among the trees in the shapes of crystal butterflies. Where when night fell sometimes the sky came alive with an aurora.

Slowly his hands sank to sit in his lap, eyes distant and far away for long moments before his hands moved again, _It was where peaceful dead drift into the Material Plane. To visit or offer wisdom or remember the world again._

“It sounds like a fairy tale forest. Like if you were looking for unicorns or something they’re probably there.” Jester smiled; her eyes a bit dreamy and her chin propped up on her hand. She turned her eyes towards the bare walls of Brunnera’s room. An idea starting to bloom in her mind the way it had in Yasha’s room earlier.

Brunnera blinked and looked down at her, a sad smile crossing his face, ears drooping and hand moving more slowly as he wove signs for her to read, _Maybe it is. I don’t remember things all the way right. Might not be real at all. Might be just a dream._

Jester shook her head sharply. “No! No no! Brunny. I can tell it’s real. I know about these things. It’s definitely real. We should go there someday.”

Brunnera shifted to loop an arm around Jester, tugging the cleric into his side for a tight hug. He dipped his head and gave her a little snuffle in her hair between her horns. “Someday, little sister…”

**Author's Note:**

> Brunnera is describing a Birch Tree forest because fucking birch trees are gorgeous in the fall and who wouldn't want to hang around in a birch forest in perpetual fall.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing! Thank you for reading!


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